Thoughts on Popular Culture and Unpopular Culture by Jaime J. Weinman (email me)

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Blackface Gags in MGM Cartoons

Thad Komorowski has an interesting post and comments thread about MGM cartoons and blackface jokes. In short, while every studio included racial stereotypes in their cartoons, MGM had a ton of gratuitous blackface gags where the only joke is that a character sort of looks black. (Whereas when Warner Brothers did the "turning black after an explosion" gag, they'd usually have the character talk like Eddie Anderson or some other celebrity.) It's common to all MGM directors and series, and it does bring a lot of these cartoons to a dead halt when screening them with an audience.